Monday, July 28, 2014

The New York Times Article 2003

This was published in The New York Times.

Full Disclosure on Leaks

By Robert Booth
Published: October 22, 2003

Secrets are created every day in the federal
government: when National Security Agency personnel create codes, when
C.I.A. case officers talk to their spies, when F.B.I. agents speak to
their sources, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff discuss troop movements.
When these secrets are revealed to the press, it is known as a leak. Not
all leaks are created equal, however. Just as the motives for leaking
differ, so do the consequences of a leak.

The first issue is
legality. Before gaining access to national security information,
government employees must take an oath affirming their responsibility to
safeguard sensitive information. This is not a novel concept. On Nov.
9, 1775, members of the Second Continental Congress signed an oath of
secrecy to protect the cause of liberty and their lives.

If
government employees fail to uphold their oath, they can be prosecuted.
Nevertheless, leaks of confidential government information have been a
constant of every administration since World War II.

The first
kind of leak is the approved leak. Most leaks to the press are
orchestrated by the administration, which uses an anonymous ''senior
government official'' to communicate its views to the public without
having to go on the record. Such leaks do not harm national security
interests and often the information disclosed is part of a coordinated
administration campaign to win support for its position.

The second category of leaks is the unapproved
leak of damaging but not truly sensitive information. This occurs when a
government employee, without any supervisory approval, releases
restricted government information to the press. The information, while
sometimes unsettling to government officials or employees, does not
jeopardize national security.

Often the source of an unapproved
leak may have access to protected government files and assumes that the
press will be willing to report any information, especially if it might
be controversial. This was certainly the case, for example, when a
worker at the Pentagon leaked some contents of Linda Tripp's personnel
file in 1998.

Unapproved leaks can have serious consequences,
however. Stuart Eizenstat, former undersecretary of state and deputy
secretary of the treasury, bitterly complained in his book ''Imperfect
Justice'' about leaks to the press that he said hurt American
negotiations with Swiss and German officials seeking financial
compensation for Jewish victims of the Nazi era.

The most serious
kind of leak is the unauthorized disclosure of national security
information. Robert Novak's revelation that the wife of former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson was a C.I.A. ''operative'' falls into this
category. Mr. Novak's source, by revealing the wife's name without
approval from the C.I.A., has potentially compromised national security.

There
are two main reasons unauthorized disclosures occur. One is to
undermine the administration; the other is to silence a critic. All
unauthorized disclosures are committed by people who ultimately wish to
influence outcomes, events and opinions. In addition to endangering
national security interests, such disclosures also subject their sources
to prosecution.

We do not yet know how much damage was caused by
Robert Novak's column about Mr. Wilson. But we do know that as long as
there is a federal government, leaks will continue -- and that people
who substitute their personal judgment for their sworn oaths are leading
America down a very slippery slope.